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Meena Kumari or Mahjabeen Bano
(1 August 1932 - 31 March 1972), was an Indian movie actress and
poetess. She is regarded as one of the most prominent actresses to
have appeared on the screens of Hindi Cinema. During a
career spanning 30 years from her childhood to her death, she
starred in more than ninety films, many of which have achieved
classic and cult status today.

Kumari gained a reputation for playing grief-stricken and tragic
roles, and her performances have been praised and reminisced
throughout the years. Like one of her best-known roles, Chhoti
Bahu, in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam
(1962), Kumari became addicted to alcohol. Her life and prosperous
career were marred by heavy drinking, troubled relationships, an
ensuing deteriorating health, and her death from liver cirrhosis in 1972.

Kumari is often cited by media and literary sources as "The
Tragedy Queen", both for her frequent portrayal of sorrowful and
dramatic roles in her films and her real-life story.[1][2]

Contents

Childhood

Mahjabeen Bano was the third daughter of Ali
Baksh and Iqbal Begum; Khursheed and Madhu were her two elder
sisters. At the time of her birth, her parents were unable to pay
the fees of Dr. Gadre, who had delivered her, so her father left
her at a Muslimorphanage, however, he
picked her up after a few hours.

Her father, a Shia Muslim, was a veteran of Parsi
theater, played harmonium, taught music, and wrote Urdu poetry. He played small roles in films like
Id Ka Chand and composed music for films like Shahi
Lutere.

Her mother, Prabhwati Devi, was the second wife of Ali Baksh.
Before meeting and then marrying Ali Baksh, she was a stage actress
and dancer, under the stage name, Kamini. After marriage, she
converted from Hinduism to Islam, and changed her name to Iqbal Begum.

(It is said that Prabhwati Devi's mother, Hem Sundari, had been
married into the Tagore
family, but she was disowned by that family after being
widowed.)

Career

Early
work

When Mahjabeen was born, Ali Bakhsh aspired to get roles as an
actor in Rooptara Studios. At the urging of his wife, he got
Mahjabeen too into movies despite her protestations of wanting to
go to school. Young Mahjabeen is said to have said, "I do not want
to work in movies; I want to go to school, and learn like other
children."

As Mahjabeen embarked on her acting career at the age of 7, she
was renamed Baby Meena. Farzand-e-Watan or
Leatherface (1939) was her first movie, which was directed
for Prakash Studios by Vijay Bhatt. She became practically the sole
breadwinner of her family during the 1940s. Her early adult acting,
under the name Meena Kumari, was mainly in mythological movies like
Veer Ghatotkach (1949), Shri Ganesh Mahima
(1950), and fantasy movies like Alladin and The Wonderful
Lamp (1952).

Breakthrough

Meena Kumari gained fame with her role as a heroine in Vijay
Bhatt's Baiju Bawra (1952). This
heroine always negated herself for the material and spiritual
advancement of the man she loved and was even willing to annihilate
herself to provide him the experience of pain so that his music
would be enriched. She became the first actress to win the Filmfare Best Actress Award
in 1953 for this performance.

Meena Kumari highly successfully played the roles of a suffering
woman in Parineeta (1953),
Daera (1953), Ek Hi Raasta (1956), Sharda (1957), and Dil Apna Aur Preet Parayi (1960).
Though she cultivated the image of a tragedienne, she also
performed commendably in a few light-hearted movies like Azaad (1955), Miss
Mary (1957), Shararat (1959), and Kohinoor
(1960).

One of her best-known roles was in Sahib
Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), which was produced by Guru Dutt. Kumari played
Chhoti Bahu, an alcoholic wife. The film was a major critical and
commercial success, which was attributed by critics to Kumari's
performance, which is regarded as one of the best performances of
Hindi Cinema.[3]
The role was famous for its uncanny similarity to Meena Kumari's
own life. At that time, she herself was on a road to gradual ruin
in her own personal life. Like her character, she began to drink
heavily, though she carried on. In 1962, she made history by
getting all the three nominations for Filmfare Best Actress
Award, for her roles in Aarti, Main Chup
Rahungi, and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. She
won the award for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. Upperstall.com
wrote about her performance,

While each of the performances are spot on, if there is one
person who is the heart and soul of the film, it is Meena Kumari.
Her portrayal of Chhoti Bahu is perhaps the greatest performance
ever seen on the Indian Screen. The sequence where Chhoti Bahu
dresses for her husband singing Piya Aiso Jiya Main is a
poignant exploration of a woman's expectations and sexual desire.
And later on when she has become a desperate alcoholic, you cannot
help but cry with her in the sequence where she pleads with her
husband to stay with her and then angrily turns on him to tell him
how she has prostituted her basic values and morals to please him.
However the common factors between the actress's life and Chhoti
Bahu are too dramatic to be merely coincidental - The estranged
marital relationship, the taking of alcohol, turning towards
younger male company, the craving to be understood and loved - all
elements evident in Meena Kumari's own life.[4]

Later
work

For four more years, Kumari performed successfully in Dil Ek Mandir
(1963), Kaajal
(1965), and Phool Aur Patthar (1966), all of
which earned her Filmfare nominations, with
Kaajal garnering her a fourth and last win of the Best
Actress award. However, after divorcing her husband in 1964, her
addiction to alcohol became stronger, and she often dulled her
senses with liquor. She also relied more and more on intimate
relationships with younger men like Dharmendra. Her subsequent releases,
including Chandan Ka Palna and Majhli Didi did
not do well.[1]

Kumari's heavy drinking had badly damaged her liver, and in 1968
she fell seriously ill.[1][5] She
was taken to London and Switzerland for treatment. Back home, she
started settling her debts and made peace with her estranged
sister, Madhu, whom she had not spoken to for two years.[5]
Because of her heavy drinking, she increasingly lost her good
looks, and when she returned, she began playing character roles in
movies like Jawab (1970) and Dushmun (1972).[1]

She developed an attachment to writer-lyricist Gulzar and acted in his directorial debut
Mere Apne
(1971). Kumari presented an acclaimed portrayal of an elderly woman
who got caught between two street gangs of frustrated, unemployed
youth and got killed, her death making the youth realise the
futility of violence.

Pakeezah,
starring Kumari and directed by her ex-husband Kamal Amrohi, took 14
years to reach the silver screen. First planned by Amrohi in 1958,
the film went on the studio floors in 1964, but the shooting came
to a standstill after their separation in March 1964, when it was
more than halfway complete.[5] In
1969, Sunil Dutt and
Nargis previewed some reels of
the shelved film and convinced the estranged Amrohi and Kumari to
complete it.[1]Hindustan
Times described the meeting which Dutt had organised
between the two:

“

Not much was said, but
streams of tears were shed... Amrohi greeted her with a token
payment of a gold guinea and the promise that he’d make her look as
beautiful as the day she had started the film.[5]

”

Gravelly ill, Kumari was determined to complete the film and,
well aware of the limited time left for her to live, went out of
her way to complete it at the earliest. Despite her rapidly
deteriorating health, she gave the finishing touches to her
performance. Initially, after its release in February 1972,
Pakeezah opened to a lukewarm response from the public;
however, after Meena Kumari's death less than two months later,
people flocked to see it, making it a major box-office success. The
film has since gained a cult and classic status, and Kumari's
performance as a golden-hearted Lucknow prostitute drew major
praise. She posthumously received her twelfth and last Filmfare
nomination.

Throughout her life, Kumari had a love-hate relationship with
movies, and besides being a top-notch actress, she was a talented
poetess, and recorded a disc of her Urdu poems, I write, I
recite with music by Khayyam.

Death

Three weeks after the release of Pakeezah, Meena Kumari became seriously ill,
and died on 31 March 1972 of cirrhosis of the
liver. At her death, she was in more or less the same financial
circumstance as her parents at the time of her birth: It is said
that when she died in a nursing home, there was no money to pay her
hospital bills.

Relationship with Kamal
Amrohi

In 1952, on the sets of one of her films, Meena Kumari fell in
love with and married film director, Kamal Amrohi, who was fifteen years elder
than her and was already married. She wrote about Amrohi:

Dil saa jab saathi payaBechaini bhi woh saath le aaya

When I found someone like my heart
He also brought sorrow with him

Soon after marriage, Kamal Amrohi and Meena Kumari produced a
film called Daera (1953), which was based on their love
story. They also planned another film, Pakeezah. However,
it took sixteen years (1956 to 1972) before Pakeezah
reached the silver screen. (The scenes in Pakeezah's popular song, Inhi logon ne, were
originally filmed in black and white, and were later reshot in
color.)

It is said that Amrohi did not want children with Meena Kumari
because she was not a Syed. They raised Kamal Amrohi's son,
Tajdaar, who was greatly attached to his chhoti ammi
(younger mother).

Due to their strong personalities, however, Meena Kumari and
Kamal Amrohi started to develop conflicts, both professionally and
in their married life. Their conflicts, separation in 1960, and
ultimate divorce in 1964 highly impacted Meena Kumari, who, once a
happy woman, became depressed and found solace in heavy
drinking.They remarried, but Meena Kumari had become an alcoholic
by then.

She expressed her sorrows prominently in her poetry. About Kamal
Amrohi she wrote: